A Powerball Winner Is Rebuilding the Altadena Neighborhood Where He Bought His Ticket
In November 2022, Edwin Castro walked into a gas station in Altadena, California, and bought a Powerball ticket that turned out to be worth $2.04 billion, the largest jackpot in the game’s history. He had grown up in the town.
Then the Eaton Fire came. In January it tore through Altadena as part of a wider Southern California fire event that killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 buildings, with somewhere between 6,000 and 9,000 homes lost in Altadena alone. The gas station where Castro bought his ticket came through largely untouched.
Now Castro is spending some of that money to help put the neighborhood back.
He has paid roughly $10 million for 15 fire-damaged lots across Altadena, according to Pasadena Now. His plan is single-family homes built for people who will live in them. He has said he wants houses that fit the character of the neighborhood he knew, and that he expects buyers to move in rather than turn the homes into rentals.
Three of the properties are not for sale at all. Castro is donating them to the Greenline Housing Foundation, a nonprofit that helps families with down payment assistance, maintenance grants, and financial education. His spokesman, Terry Fahn, said the work was about “how best to maintain the old Altadena they know and loved.” Fahn added that Castro may build a few of the houses for himself and his family. Castro works through a real estate company he and his brother, Jesse, formed in 2024.
As of May 2026, two of Castro’s houses were under construction, and he had not filed for permits on any of the remaining lots. He is the second-largest buyer of vacant Altadena lots, behind a firm called Ocean Development Inc., and the arrival of outside money on burned land has left some residents uneasy.
That wariness has eased as projects have started to produce finished homes. Still, not everyone is ready to call it a good thing. Milessa Michelson, co-founder of the advocacy group Altadena Not for Sale, said it is too early to judge what outside investors will mean for the town, and she has asked developers to engage more directly, including through town halls. Teresa Fuller, a local real estate agent, pushed back on the fear that investors are inflating prices, calling that worry “a myth.” Investors bought just under half of the 287 vacant lots sold in Altadena in 2025, a share the reporting notes comes to less than half a percent of the roughly 6,000 homes the fire destroyed there.
Castro grew up in Altadena, and he is directing his winnings back into it, toward houses that families will own in a neighborhood he wants to keep recognizable. It is still early, and residents are waiting to see how much of the plan gets built. Three of the lots are set to go to families through the Greenline Housing Foundation.
